Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayer for attention to the Gospel according to Mark
chapter 8, and reading for our text from verse 35 to 37. Verse 35, For whosoever will
save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his
life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what
shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world? and lose
his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul? Mark 8 and verses 35 to 37. And what is upon my spirit this
evening is gain that is loss. This morning we had the other
way, loss that is gain. Our Lord here is setting forth
before the people the worth of a soul. What shall it profit
a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? What shall a man give in exchange
for his soul? If we were to ask them down the
streets of this town, we'd probably have no idea of what a soul was,
or that we possessed a soul. Our soul is that which God has
given us. God has given us at birth, and
that shall never ever cease to exist. While we are here on this
world, it dwells in our bodies. And at death it will be released
from this body, shall return unto God that gave it. That is
our real person. Our bodies are a tabernacle,
and that soul is that which shall appear in the presence of God.
The Apostle Paul says, absent from the body, present with the
Lord. And he is speaking of himself
and of his body as being a tabernacle. We are also told that at the
last great day, that God shall come again when this world shall
be destroyed, and he shall come with all of his saints, the souls
of his saints, and the dead in Christ shall arise first. Bodies shall be given to those
souls again. Job says, in my flesh shall I
see God. even though he testifies though
after my skin worms destroy this body. And Paul tells us in his
epistle to the Corinthians that we shall be given a celestial
body as we have borne the image of the earthy so we shall bear
the image of the heavenly. But the soul all the time is
spoken of as a constant As we have borne the image of the earthly,
so we shall bear the image of the heavenly. It is the soul
that's the constant, the body, the tabernacle, that is changed. The soul does not change. And
so this is why our Lord is insisting, what shall it profit a man if
he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Because
when this world is no more, the soul is still. And when we die,
we shall carry nothing out of this world, and we shall appear
in the presence of God. And it shall not matter whether
we've been rich or poor, whatever we've had in this world, But
what shall matter is whether our souls are made fit to stand
before God, to lift up our head with joy, whether there is that
done in this world that is needful to be done. And why does it need
to be done? Because our souls, we are dead
in sin and trespasses, we are under the sentence of death,
not just our body. but our soul as well. It is not
a case that every man, woman, and child shall die literally,
but then their soul goes to heaven. Some teach that. Some even with
a profession of religion teach that. They say that as Christ
has come, as he has died for sin, therefore everyone is saved. We can live like we like, we
don't need a personal faith, a personal religion, we all go
to heaven. The Bible is very clear, all
men do not go to heaven. That by nature we will go to
hell unless there is that work of God's grace and mercy done
in us while we are here. unless we are given personal
faith in Christ, and by His grace we are saved. Through the Gospel,
through the Word of God, the preaching of God, God calls sinners,
awakens them to a sense of their need of a Saviour, calls them
to know that they have a soul, the worth of their soul, and
how unspeakable it will be to lose that soul. to enter into
eternity with no change from our birth to our death, and to
then have to give an account and have none to pay our debt
for us. The only outcome of that is to
be banished eternally from the Lord. We are not only under a
sentence of death of the mortal body, but death of the soul,
not extinction, not annihilation, but a casting into hellfire for
eternity, eternally banished from God, eternal torments in
hell. That is the sentence that we
are under. The worth of the soul then is
a soul that lives our being that lives now in the day of grace. It lives, as it were, in a natural
way within us, but yet being dead in trespasses and sins,
it is not alive until quickened. And that is the call of the gospel,
that is the work of God, that is the reason for the preaching
of the gospel. is that in these times, from
Christ unto the end of the world, there shall be a number that
shall be awakened to their need, and shall hearken to such a word
as this, and realize maybe for the first time what their soul
is worth. We know naturally what things
on earth are worth, All the time we make that choice as we buy
things. Weighing up, are we getting a
good bargain or not? Is it the best price? Are we
getting the best value for what we are expending out? We know
the value of temporal things. We hopefully know the value also
of our health, of our strength. The value of having our faculties. being able to walk, being able
to use our limbs. When we see those that are blind,
or see those that are lame, or see those that cannot have any
movement to help themselves at all, and we see things that people
have not that we have got, and that we just take for granted
all the time, that we may Know the value of that, the value
of natural health. But what about the health of
the soul? In the epistles of John we read
that, is that desire, I think it is of Gaius, that thou be
in health even as thy soul prospereth. And there's a comparison between
the health of the soul and the health of the body. In fact,
it's desiring the health of the body to match the health of the
soul. The apostle obviously viewed
the one he was writing to as being in a healthy state of soul. The letters to the churches in
the Revelation indicate some that were in an unhealthy state
of soul. Those that had lost their first
love, those that had grown lukewarm, those that were tolerating evil
in their churches, and those that held evil and taught evil,
and those that did not abhor evil themselves. God's people can, like David,
get into very low places and fall, and fall into sin. The
Lord in mercy chastens them, corrects them, and restores them,
but a soul a soul that is yet still dead in trespasses and
sins, one that is spiritually dead, that needs quickening into
life. That soul is still a soul that
shall exist forever, but is under condemnation. Romans 8 tells
us, there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are
in Christ Jesus. but those that are not are under
condemnation. And what our Lord then is impressing
upon the people and his disciples in this way is the worth of the
soul, but he's also setting forth that there are those things that
we can pursue after in this life that actually are detrimental
to the soul. There are those things that countless
millions are taken up with and ensnared with, and because they're
ensnared with those things, they pay no attention to the soul
and no concern for the soul at all. So our Lord says, and I
ask the question, what shall it profit a man If he shall gain
the whole world and lose his own soul, lose his own soul,
that is, that soul appears before God condemned as guilty and consigned
to endless ruin, what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul? What shall we be, and as it were,
willing to part with that we might be blessed in our souls? And what is it that we may count
as gain, but actually instead of it being gain, it is loss? Because though it may be a gain,
for our bodies, yet it is loss for our soul. And this is what
the Lord then is setting before the people. Whosoever will come
after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow
me. We spoke this morning of the
loss that is gain. But this evening, it is the other
way around. It is those things that Men see
as gain, we may see as gain, but actually is loss. And may we help to examine ourselves
on these things. I desire the Lord's help to look
at several examples, seven of them, from the Word of God, and
may we be searched through them as to the value of our soul and
are we also falling into that same trap. The first one I'll
bring before you is the sin of covetousness. The most solemn
case is in the case of Gehazi. And why I feel it is most solemn
He was a servant, a servant of the prophet Elijah. He saw many miracles, he saw
the power of God. He write close to the man of
God. And yet, the things of this world
were such a pull to him. that he would go to the lengths
of deceit and lying to be able to attain unto them. You remember
the account of Naaman, the captain of the host of the king of Syria.
He was a leper. And Elijah was used to heal him
of his leprosy. And Naaman wanted to repay him,
to give him a present. And so he offered him those things, a burden,
two mules, burden of earth for thy servant. This is 2 Kings
chapter 5. And he offered him other things
as well. but he refused to take it. He says, I pray thee, take a
blessing of thy servant. But Elijah says, as the Lord
liveth before whom I stand, I will receive none. And he urged him
to take it, but he refused. Refusing to take those presents,
you might say, Well, would it have been sin to have taken them? He saw it as a snare. He saw it as that which he should
not do. But then we hear what Gehazi
said. In verse 20, But Gehazi, the
servant of Elisha, a man of God, said, Behold, my master hath
spared Naaman the Syrian in not receiving at his hands that which
he bought. But as the Lord liveth, I will
run after him and take somewhat of him. Gehazi, he sees this
opportunity. He sees this wealth that has
been wanting to be part with in gratitude. His master has
said no, but his heart is going after it. So he follows after
him and he makes up a story. says his master had sent him,
that was a lie he had not. Told him that two men from Ephraim
had come, that was a lie as well. And that he should give a present
to them. And so Naaman gives them and
even more. And so then Gehazi comes and
he takes them and he hides them in the tower and goes and stands
before Elijah. Elijah that he'd seen were the
miracles, God worked them through him, and that he should have
been able to know that Elijah would have known exactly what
he'd been doing. God could show him what had happened,
and he did. Sorry, it's Elisha. Elisha said unto him, whence
comest thou, Gehazi? And he said, thy servant went.
no wither, again, another lie. We often say that one sin is
never alone. There's always others that are
joined to it. And we can certainly see this
here with Gehazi. One sin follows another. And what Elisha said to him was
this, when not mine heart with thee, when the men Man turned
again from his chariot to meet thee. Is it a time to receive
money, and to receive garments, and olive yards, and vineyards,
and sheep, and oxen, and men's servants, and maid's servants?
The leprosy, therefore, of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and to
thy seed forever. And he went out from his presence,
a leprous white as snow." You might say, well, Gehazi, He didn't
receive olive yards, vineyards, sheep, oxen, menservants, and
maidservants. He got changes of raiment, and
he got silver. But what is implied here, he
got the money, and with the money, then he could have his olive
yards, vineyards, sheep, oxen, menservants, That is, as it were, the love
of money, the coveting and going after it. And is so much with
us. It really is. You know, when
I was probably about 20, 28, and I paid off my home in Australia,
And there was advertised land that was nearby for auction,
an old school site. And I felt so drawn to go and
to bid for this land, though I'd be borrowing every cent of
it. And I believe the Lord warned
me I would fall if I went in that. But you know, I had in
my mind, no shame, confess it. You know, as a professing, baptised
Christian, But I thought, well, I'd already got one house fully
paid off. I could get this land. I could
build on it. I could rent it out. And the
rent would pay for that. And I'd get that. And then I'd
buy my next. And I had this property empire
in my head. And that's what was going to
go. You know, I bought that land. The interest rate at that time
was a tremendous rate, really, 13%. But as soon as I bought it, the
interest rate went straight up to 18%. The market dropped. You
could not give away the land. I was stuck with that for four
years. Lost $30,000 over that one transaction. And yet the Lord made it up.
The Lord overruled that evil for good and taught me really
a lesson I hope I'll never, ever forget. But we have that desire,
especially when we get a little taste of success, a little taste
of having money when we didn't have it, or in a position to
expand. If we'd have had no possibility
of it, then we might not have thought our hearts would go after
it. But you see, here with Gehazi, he got this little possibility. Here was this, what was being
offered and not taken. It was as it were within his
grasp to get, even if he had to get in a wrong way. And this
is a sin, a way that countless millions of souls are entrapped
and destroyed. And it is what may be a gain
at first. What if the Lord allowed us to
succeed? What if he allowed us to have
these the love of riches, and to go on getting more and more,
and as a drug it became a god. You know, it's not the amount
that we have, it's where our heart is. You can have someone
that has been blessed with a good job, and blessed, and they are
wealthy, but the heart is not in it, and they deal well with
their wealth. And you can have someone that
has only but a small amount, but it starts to grow, and their
heart is set in it. You know, going back to my own
case, when I got near to paying off the house, I remember one
day I sat down and worked out when I should have paid it off.
And I worked out my wages, and what I had spare, and how much
I could put, and I planned it all out. Well, the Lord saw what
I was doing. And at that time, I had changed
my car. And the mechanics had done, changed
one of the axles on it, changed the ratio, the speedometer was
wrong. And I suddenly had a run of three
or four speeding fines, and I couldn't work it out. I tried hard to
keep to the speed limit. But of course, what I thought
I was going according to my speedo was not the true speed, which
was the reason I kept getting caught. It was only when I overtook
a police car with a cruise control at the wrong setting that he
followed me and I found out what was wrong. And the Lord completely
pulled apart all of those schemes and all of the sums with all
of the speeding fines. And those are lessons that you,
though they're years ago, you think, and bless the Lord if
the Lord blights our schemes and our get-rich-quick, our gain,
that really is loss. Another case I'll bring before
you is that of Achan. When the children of Israel came
into the promised land, then Joshua forbade them to take of
the accursed thing. And he charged them very, very
clearly. It wasn't a... a thing that was
a small thing, but in Joshua chapter 6 he says, And ye, in
any wise, keep yourselves, verse 18, from the accursed thing,
lest ye make yourselves a curse, when ye take of the accursed
thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it. And
they were told, All the silver and the gold and the vessels
of brass and iron They are consecrated unto the Lord. They shall come
into the sanctuary of the Lord. But then we read in the next
chapter of the solemn case of Achan and God finding out his
sin and his confession and what he says when he's found out.
And they can answer Joshua and said, Indeed, I have sinned against
the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done. When I
saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment and 200 shekels
of silver and a wedge of gold of 50 shekels weight, then I
coveted them and took them and behold their head in the earth
in the midst of my tent and the silver under it. Well, Achan
was destroyed from Israel. But in what he had done, he troubled
not only himself and his house, but all Israel. And so Joshua,
he says to him, why hast thou troubled us? The Lord shall trouble
thee this day. What good did those things for
Achan? Again, that which he looked upon
was to be gained. What a loss it was to him, his
own life, his own soul, that of his own family as well, untroubled
Israel. Gain, that is loss. What shall
a man give in exchange for his soul? Then we think of the warning
that is given us in the prophecy of Jeremiah. And that is of getting
gain by false means, not stealing as it were, or not just taking
it, but in a false way. We read in chapter 17, verse
11, as a partridge sitteth on anks and hatcheth them not, So
he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in
the midst of his days, and at the end shall be a fool. It is
right for us to work diligently, effectively, working as unto
the Lord, not as unto men. And those riches are right to
be earned, as we earn our daily bread. But if that is then done
in a deceitful way, a wrong way, not by right. One solemn thing
many years ago, I'd only just started working in a firm and
was offered $450. And I said, what's this for? And they said, well, it's for
use of your car for business. And I said, but I don't use my
car for business. They said, don't worry, that
doesn't matter. We all claim it. It's a tax thing. And I said,
well, I'm sorry, you keep your money because I'm not using my
car and I'm not taking the money because it's not mine to have. That is, if you use a car, you
can claim that. If you don't, then you don't.
And they tried and tried to get me to take it, but I refused.
But that would be of taking a money and not buying rides. tax dodgers
or those things that are stretching the truth as it were instead
of honestly getting it. And it's one of those things
where very often another sin is bound up with another and
our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked
and it will try out ways that it might get rounded. And may
the Lord discover to us what we are actually doing, and show
us before it is too late. The fourth thing that I bring
before you is where we would go after a pleasant land, but
not consider where we are actually going. There came a time when
Abraham and Lot had to part company because they had grown large
in their flocks and Abraham gave Lot the choice of where he should
go. And in Genesis chapter 13 and
verse 10 we read of the choice that Lot made. The choice that was given him,
Abraham said to him, is not the whole land before thee? Separate
thyself, I pray thee, from me. If thou wilt take the left hand,
then I will go to the right. Or if thou wilt depart to the
right hand, then I will go to the left. And then we read, Lifted
up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was
well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and
Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord light the land of
Egypt as thou comest into Zohar. And so then Lot chose him, all
the plain of Jordan. But then we read in verse 13,
but, a solemn but, The men of Sodom were wicked and sinners
before the Lord exceedingly. You read here that he pitched
his tent towards Sodom in verse 12. But very soon he was found
in Sodom. And we are told that he still
was a man of faith. but he vexed his righteous soul
day to day with the unlawful deeds of those wherein he was
dwelling. How easy for us. He might have
some prospects in some part of England and where we could go
and where we could live and where our job might be. But how many
would just look at the outward prospects the job, the location,
the type of land that it is. And they don't consider, well,
where is this people? What is the people that I will
be dwelling amongst? Are they God-fearing? Are they
wicked? Am I in a place of constant temptation? Or is there a house of God nearby? Where shall I worship? How many
young people it may be, We'll settle on a university, but not
think, where will I go and worship? We'll settle on where we shall
live, but not think, well, how far is it from the house of God? And there's a real lesson. Even
in moving where we choose to go in this world, are we doing
it just for the gain of our bodies? Or are we having a regard to
our soul with lot In the end, instead of that nice fertile
land and all the flocks and all that he had and all why he had
to separate from Abraham, he ended up on his own. He didn't
have his wife. He had two children with him.
And then they had children by incest with him. But he lost
everything, was consumed in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. Gain, that is loss. most certainly
was in the case of Lot. But then we have, we touched
this morning on the friendship of this world. James says, Know
ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? And our Lord in the beautiful
Beatitudes, He speaks of what we may expect of the world. And whereas the friendship of
the world is enmity with God, in walking in the ways of the
Lord, we have in Matthew 5 and from verse 10, blessed are they
which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall
revile you and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against
you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad,
for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets
which were before you. We all like to be thought well
of, and yet to go to great extent and lengths so that we are thought
well of by the world and conform to the world. and our friendship
with the world, then what we may count as a gain is really
a loss. And what is a gain is the persecution,
that which is endured by actually following the Lord. In John 17,
we have the Lord saying, I have given them thy word, and the
world hath hated them. There is a woe on us when all
men speak well of us, for so they did the false prophets that
were before you. A gain that may be gained in
friendship and think, well, we're getting on well like this, is
really a loss, a loss spiritually. loss that I'd mention, or what
shall be seemed again, but really a loss, is the desecration of
the Lord's Day. In the creation, God worked six
days in forming the earth. He sanctified the seventh day,
hallowed it, And in the law it is taken up that we are to remember
the Sabbath day and is found in two places where the law is
mentioned, Deuteronomy 5, Exodus 20, and is one of the longest
of the commandments that there are. Remember the Sabbath day
in the Old Testament or as a creation one, it is the seventh day. to
keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour and
do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord
thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work,
thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant,
nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. is
brought back to the creation ordinance. For in six days the
Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is,
and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the
Sabbath and hallowed it. And this is again reinforced
in Isaiah 58 and verse 13. If thou turn away thy foot from
the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the
Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord honourable, and shall
honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure,
nor speaking thine own words. Then shalt thou delight thyself
in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places
of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father,
for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. In the New Testament,
our Lord sanctified the first day of the week in rising from
the dead, in appearing to his disciples in the two appearances
in the upper room, and the disciples carried on that practice in the
early church of using the day that the Lord rose from the dead
as the Lord's day. still with the same principle,
one day in seven, hallowed, set apart for the Lord. Yes, we serve
the Lord every day, but the early church had that day when they
could feel they could rightly lay aside their labours, gather
together for communal worship, and when all were not constrained
except for essential works to work, were free to gather together. If we were, for instance, nowadays,
to say, well, let's make our Sabbath to be a Wednesday, you'd
find most of the people would be working on that day. And in
years gone by, especially, the Sabbath, the Lord's Day, was
kept special and separate here in this land. And in some ways
it still is, but desecrated in many ways. And we are called
to observe that day. What would we think of having
heaven and to be eternally with the Lord if we cannot let go
of this world for one day in seven? If we must have so much
a grasp of the world that we cannot let it go, to be with
the people of God and around the word of God. The words written,
I think probably in the 1600s, certainly appeared in magazines
in 1844. I think it was ascribed to a
Matthew Hale. Sabbath well spent brings a week
of content and strength for the toils of the morrow. But a Sabbath
profaned, whate'er be gained, is a certain forerunner of sorrow. So what may be gained, there
is a loss when we desecrate the Lord's Day, when we do not give
Him the one day in seven. The last one I bring before you
is this, where we are seeking nothing in religion but worldly
gain. We have a solemn case of one
that was baptised, and this was found to be the case with him. Simon Magus it was, in Acts chapter
8. And Philip had been preaching,
and there were those that were being baptised. And then Simon,
Simon Magus, who was a sorcerer, a magician, and he also believed. When he was baptised, he continued
with Philip and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which
were done. And then Peter and John came,
who, when they came down, prayed for them that they might receive
the Holy Ghost. For as yet he was fallen upon
none of them, only they were baptised in the name of the Lord
Jesus. Then laid they their hands on
them, and they received the Holy Ghost. And then we read this,
and when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands
the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, Give
me also this power that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the
Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto him, Thy
money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift
of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part
nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in the sight
of God. And he exhorted him to repent
of that wickedness. But how many, how many through
history thought they could purchase the gifts of God through money,
purchase indulgences in the Church of Rome, or those that are the
pastors of megachurches, churches that have so many thousands attending
and those that conduct the services are millionaires, that they have
such wealth through their ministry and through what they do in the
name of the Lord. To think that there are some
churches that even preach a prosperity gospel, saying that if we truly
are blessed, then the Lord will prosper us. Look at me, I'm doing
well. And that's what message they
bring to a people. Solemn perversion of the word
of God. Now that we are so warned and
poor when he writes to Timothy in his first epistle, he says
to him, in chapter 6, that we are to avoid those men, those
disputings of men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth,
supposing that gain is godliness. From such withdraw thyself, but
godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing
into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. and
having food and raiment, let us be there with content. But they that will be rich fall
into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful
lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of
money is the root of all evil, which, while some covet it after,
they have heard from the faith. and pierce themselves through
with many sorrows. His advice to Timothy, O man
of God, flee these things. And then he puts the positive
side, follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience,
meekness, fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal
life. Our Lord's words concerning our
soul What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world
and lose his own soul? Sometimes we need to be brought
up short, to look at our lives, to look at where our priorities
are. What are we paying attention
to more? Our soul or our body? Our life here or that which is
to come? Are we got those things we're
counting as gain? And yet actually they are loss
because they are loss to the soul. How will it be in the balances
of the sanctuary? How precious is the Lord? You
know, the more the Lord is precious, then we'll hold the things of
this poor world with a loose hand. The more we'll see what
they are, vain and empty and foolish. and the more will prize
that pearl of great price and of that inheritance which is
incorruptible and undefiled and reserved in heaven for us. That
blessing that is not purchased with money but with the precious
blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that which is shed
on Calvary, the Apostle says, that ye are bought with a price. Wherefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are his. And may we then be blessed
with a deliverance from those snares that so many fall into,
those that are in the world that have never been to the house
of God, those of us that have been brought up under the sound
of the truth And the snare and the pull is just the same. Those
even who have made profession, and still, it is a warning we
need, that that gain that we may count as gain, there is a
loss, and a loss to our souls. So may the Lord give us that
worth of our soul. Our soul be precious, and we
look at our lives, and we see the things that we are doing,
dying though they may appear in natural ways, they're actually
doing great damage and great loss to our souls. May the Lord add his blessing.
Amen.